EDITIONS

Follow us

President Donald Trump's supplemental request for Pentagon funding for the rest of this fiscal year and his broad outline for fiscal 2018’s defense spending face serious hurdles on Capitol Hill. | Getty

Hopes for Trump's military buildup dimming

Defense hawks are starting to lose hope in President Donald Trump’s promises of a “historic” military buildup.

Trump vowed during the campaign to make the military so big and powerful that “nobody — absolutely nobody — is going to mess with us,” and since his inauguration he has rattled sabers at North Korea, launched an airstrike on Syria and dropped an enormous bomb on Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan.

Story Continued Below

But nearly 100 days into his presidency, Republican legislative stumbles have fueled doubts that Congress will approve the $84 billion defense boost he has proposed for this fiscal year and next — a jump that many advocates have already slammed as too small.

And without serious new spending, military leaders have warned Congress, the services’ readiness will continue to erode.

For example, three Navy ships set to deploy this year to Europe and the Middle East will stay in their home ports without the supplemental funds Trump requested. And the Marine Corps has said it will have to ground all of its planes from July to the end of September unless Congress gives it more money in a fiscal 2017 spending bill.

Over the long term, Trump’s plans to grow the military simply won’t happen without more money.

Building and operating a 355-ship Navy would cost $102 billion a year through 2047, about a third more than the amount appropriated in fiscal 2016, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. And personnel costs for the Army and Marines would increase dramatically under Trump’s proposal, which would add more than 70,000 troops between the two services.

“The industry is certainly frustrated that the initial hopefulness has not borne out, or at least not borne out yet,” said Doug Berenson, a managing director of the defense systems practice for the consulting firm Avascent. “A lot of people in the industry, myself included, sort of allowed ourselves to get ahead of ourselves in the first weeks following the election without fully realizing the budget politics that have been with us for the last five or six years are not completely gone.”

The dimmed hopes are already having an impact on defense companies, which are holding back on major investments or hiring decisions until they see whether the boosted Pentagon budgets materialize, said Marc Numedahl, executive vice president at the lobbying firm Crossroads Strategies.

For example, he said, shipbuilders would need to ramp up to handle the type of buildup Trump has called for, including expanding the Navy to at least 350 ships. That would include modernizing shipyards and hiring skilled workers like welders, who can take years to train. But he doesn't expect the defense industry to invest big money until it’s sure more federal dollars are coming.

“Industry is going to be ready to pull the trigger once they know that the government customer has the resources to do it,” he said.

Besides expanding the 275-ship Navy,Trump has called for growing the Army and Marine Corps by 60,000 and 12,000 troops, respectively. And he would buy at least 100 more combat planes for the Air Force.

In one of his first executive orders, the president asked the Pentagon to review other areas where it could improve and invest, addressing shortfalls like delayed maintenance, insufficient training and a lack of spare parts or consumables like fuel and ammunition, as well as any manpower needs.

The White House referred a question about hopes for defense spending to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to a request for comment. But the Pentagon expressed no worries about getting the funding it requires.

"There is enough time for Congress to prevent a lapse in appropriations, and we expect Congress will work with the Administration to complete a short-term continuing resolution or fund much of our additional FY 2017 budget request," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Badger said. "The Secretary and the Service Chiefs highlighted the readiness needs of the armed forces in their recent testimony. That has not changed."

Morning Defense newsletter

Sign up for Morning Defense, a daily briefing on Washington's national security apparatus.

Email

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Some key lawmakers aren’t giving up hope, despite obstacles such as the spending limits imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act and continued Democratic resistance to spending more on defense without an increase for nondefense needs.

"I think arguments about what we need on the defense side are very compelling, " said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who chairs the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee. “It's just a matter of how do we find that pathway in order to get there.”

Yet the signs are not encouraging to a number of close observers of the defense budget wars of recent years — despite Republican control of the White House and Congress, and even though both parties largely agree that national security threats require more military spending.

The competing GOP defense-hawk and budget-hawk camps have yet to find common ground, and it's increasingly doubtful that Democrats will support lifting the Pentagon’s spending limits unless domestic programs receive equal increases.

“Clearly, I think people have dialed back some of the initially exuberant expectations because getting things done in D.C. is hard and the Budget Control Act is still the law of the land,” said Roman Schweizer, an analyst with the Cowen Washington Research Group.

As a result, Trump's supplemental request for Pentagon funding for the rest of this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, and his broad outline for fiscal 2018’s defense spending face serious hurdles on Capitol Hill.

The supplemental, which seeks $30 billion in extra defense spending, would pay for that increase mostly with cuts to nondefense programs — widely considered a nonstarter with Democrats. It would also require Congress to renegotiate the Budget Control Act caps for this fiscal year, which is already nearly half over.

American Enterprise Institute analyst Mackenzie Eaglen predicted that Congress will pass a smaller supplemental of about $10 billion to $15 billion and fund it through the so-called Overseas Contingency Operations fund, a separate war account that is not subject to the budget caps.

Trump's major effort to boost the military, in the form of a new budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, faces similar obstacles even before the details have been fully fleshed out.

It calls for spending $603 billion in fiscal 2018, which is roughly $54 billion above the levels mandated by the budget caps — but much lower than many hawks in the defense industry and Congress had hoped for. And again, Trump wants to pay for it by cutting domestic programs, further alienating Democrats.

Democrats argue that domestic spending should be higher, partly to ensure full funding for agencies that play critical roles in national security, such as the FBI and CIA. They say the additional money would also invest in education and nutrition to make sure the military has a qualified pool of recruits for the next generation of service members.

Democratic support could be critical for any defense boost: Congress’ failure to pass Trump’s initial health care bill showed that Republicans can’t necessarily push through their legislative agenda on their own, especially in the Senate, where many actions require 60 votes.

But Wittman told POLITICO that any defense spending increase will probably have to fit within the current caps. That means lawmakers would have to cut from other parts of the discretionary budget or from entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

Still, he said he’s optimistic that "that lawmakers can set aside differences for the good of the nation."

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), chairman of Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee, likewise said he hopes lawmakers will unite on a solution given the threats facing the country.

"I firmly believe we can have a bipartisan approach to ensuring that our troops have the training, equipment and resources they need," he said. "Given the current threat situation — North Korea, Syria, Iran, ISIS, Iraq, Afghanistan — I believe this year we can take the first step towards reversing the harmful decline."

The partisan wrangling is a letdown for some leading advocates who had been optimistic that the annual fight over defense spending would end under the new Republican administration.

“Was there some hope that perhaps an increase in the defense budget would be decoupled from the nondefense domestic budget? Yes, absolutely,” said Dan Stohr, a spokesman for the Aerospace Industries Association, which represents more than 300 aerospace companies. “National security is one of the foremost duties for our government. Funding it appropriately should not be held hostage to other spending or other priorities.”

But even what Trump has proposed falls far short of what the association had hoped.

AIA has advocated for a $640 billion defense spending bill for 2018, in line with that proposed by the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Stohr said Trump’s $603 billion proposal “would be better than what we would currently experience under the BCA. However, because of the long-term negative effects of operating under the budget control caps, we should get more than that."

Still, Eaglen predicted spirits could be further dashed once Trump releases the full details of his spending plans.

“I’d say the mood is dampening but not dimming quite yet,” Eaglen said. “For now, it’s a hopeful wait-and-see, especially for the 2018 budget details. But if those disappoint come May, as I expect they will, then it will be a very different tune sung at that time.”

One key portent will come this week as Congress faces Friday's deadline to either enact a 2017 appropriations bill, pass another continuing spending resolution or shut down the government, Crossroads Strategies’ Numedahl said.

"If they’re able to get through the end of the month and get to a way forward with defense spending, that shows a good path forward for [fiscal] '18 and '19,” he said. “If they get bogged down and go to a full year CR, which I don’t expect to happen, but if they do I think that’s when industry starts to lose a little faith in this big defense buildup.”